August 7, 2019 — The Center for Coastal Studies’ Marine Animal Entanglement Response Team freed an entangled minke whale last Thursday off Rockport and saved it from a great white shark.
The 18-foot whale was anchored by gear with rope through its mouth and around its tail.
The whale had a deep cut from the rope and minor bleeding had attracted a great white.
A video showing the extent of the entanglement can be viewed below.
August 1, 2019 — A Canadian surveillance plane was scanning the waters of Gulf of St. Lawrence when it made a grisly discovery: The carcass of a North Atlantic right whale, one of some 400 remaining in the world, was drifting in the current, much of its skin sloughed off.
From there, the news would only get worse. The next day, another dead right whale was spotted in the same body of water. And an 18-year-old right whale was entangled in fishing gear near Quebec, with a rope cutting into its head and over its blowhole.
It’s been a devastating summer for the endangered marine mammal. Since the start of June, eight North Atlantic right whales — or 2 percent of the global population — have been found dead in Canadian waters, alarming scientists, conservationists and government officials who had believed they had begun to make progress in protecting the imperiled species.
“It’s a horrifying step toward extinction,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, the executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation USA. “They’re a quiet, understated superhero, and we’re losing them.”
Necropsy results are still pending for most of the whales, but preliminary findings for three of them suggest ship strikes.
Particularly troubling about this year’s deaths is that four of the whales were breeding females, of which fewer than 100 remain. Calving rates have dropped 40 percent since 2010, according to scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, making the deaths of the females a major blow.
“This is currently very clearly not sustainable,” said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston. “At this rate, in 20 years, we’re going to have no more breeding females, and the population will be effectively extinct.”
July 11, 2019 — A North Atlantic right whale rescue mission has failed in its first attempt because of how difficult it is to track the endangered animals.
On Tuesday, the Campobello Whale Rescue Team headed out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence to try to locate and disentangle one of the three entangled North Atlantic right whales spotted in recent weeks.
Philip Hamilton, research scientist with the New England Aquarium, said the rescue team lost track of the whale because the plane that was monitoring it needed to refuel and had to go back to dry land.
“They didn’t have aerial support to help relocate the whale,” he said.
June 25, 2019 — A new study published last week underscores the urgency of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) taking decisive action to protect the North Atlantic right whale from extinction. North Atlantic right whales are among the most endangered whales in the world, with a population numbering no more than four hundred and eleven.
The study, published in the scientific journal Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, reveals how humans are pushing the North Atlantic right whale to extinction. The study examined the cause of death for 70 dead right whales from 2003 to 2018 and found that over 88% of the deaths were attributable to ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. The study also found that right whale entanglement mortalities increased from 21% in the study period 1970 to 2002 to 51% from 2003 to 2018.
Despite these alarming statistics, the United States has failed to implement decisive measures to reduce entanglements of the right whale in fishing gear. Plans to implement regulations appear to have stalled due to opposition from some sectors of the fishing industry. This spring, PEER sought documents from NMFS regarding right whale entanglements. PEER received hundreds of pages of redacted documents, and virtually nothing indicating that NMFS was taking serious action to save the whales. Last week’s study stressed the need for swift action, stating, “These cumulative mortalities are also unsustainable at the population level, so urgent and aggressive intervention is needed to end anthropogenic mortality in this critically endangered species.”
June 24, 2019 — The second dead right whale of the year was found Thursday by a surveillance flight, drifting northeast of the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, according to the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
The death was confirmed by New England Aquarium, which has identified the whale as “Punctuation,” an adult female that has been studied by researchers for nearly 40 years and seen more than 250 times along the coast of the U.S. and Canada.
The aquarium maintains a photographic identification catalog that encompasses most of the right whale population. Punctuation was first photographed in 1981.
“All right whale deaths hit hard, but this one is particularly devastating to the population,” the aquarium staff wrote in an emailed statement.
June 21, 2019 — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton is trying to secure additional funding for North Atlantic right whale research through an amendment to the federal government funding bill for fiscal year 2020.
Moulton, D-Salem, successfully amended the House of Representatives’ funding bill to include an additional $1.5 million for cooperative research by federal fishery regulators, commercial fishermen and conservation groups.
The amended funding bill now contains $2.5 million for right whale research.
To secure the funding however, the amended legislation first must first pass the House next week and survive negotiations between the House and the Senate on a final spending bill. Ultimately, it would have to have to be signed by President Donald J. Trump.
Moulton, a Democratic presidential candidate, said the fight to save the remaining North Atlantic right whales — whose population now is estimated at 411 — “is also a fight to protect thousands of jobs in commercial fishing and tourism in Massachusetts.”
June 17, 2019 — Before the leviathan was dragged to shore, before it was found floating at sea trailing a slick of blood, the massive creature had had its run-ins with its greatest nemesis: human beings.
This North Atlantic right whale — among the most endangered species on the planet — was known by researchers as Wolverine, for three propeller cuts on its tailstock that reminded them of the trio of blades used by the comic book character of the same name. In its short life of nine years, journeying through thousands of miles of dense fishing grounds, the whale had endured at least one vessel strike and three entanglements in fishing gear.
Now, Wolverine was decomposing on a grassy beach at the northernmost tip of New Brunswick’s Acadian peninsula, its large, black fins inert in the salty air, its wide fluke tangled in red rope that the Canadian Coast Guard used to haul its carcass in from the frigid waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The death of even one of the mammals poses a grave threat to the species, given how few remain. But almost as notable is that Wolverine was here at all.
Until recently, right whales were seldom seen this far north. Now about a third of the species regularly comes to feed in these frigid waters. It has proved to be a very dangerous migration.
June 4, 2019 — Trump administration plans to encourage offshore oil and gas drilling are motivating attempts to exempt Massachusetts, and maybe foil the entire scheme.
Lawmakers are weighing a ban on drilling for oil or gas in state waters, as well as a prohibition on the lease of state lands for oil or gas exploration, development or production.
While there are no immediate plans to drill off the New England coast, green groups say the proposal would fend off future efforts by denying access to the state’s land and waters, thus making exploration impractical.
The legislation, which goes before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture on Tuesday, is part of a multi-state effort to thwart President Donald Trump’s plan to open more than 90 percent of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas exploration.
New Jersey, Delaware and California passed offshore drilling bans last year. Similar legislation has been filed in New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Environmentalists say drilling will harm ecosystems and endangered species, such as the North Atlantic right whale, while threatening commercial fishing and tourism businesses.
May 19, 2019 — Whale researchers at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center are observing large numbers of North Atlantic right whales and other whale species in Northeast waters.
An aerial team flying for the Center out of the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station at Joint Base Cape Cod and from Hyannis, are continuing their long-term survey for right whales.
The effort supports a range of research and is part of an annual seasonal distribution and abundance survey of protected marine animals along the East Coast.
May 6, 2019 — Fishing managers on the East Coast began the daunting process this week of implementing new restrictions on lobster fishing that are designed to protect a vanishing species of whale.
A team organized by the federal government recommended last week that the number of vertical trap lines in the water be reduced by about half. The lines have entrapped and drowned the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers a little more than 400 and has declined by dozens this decade.
The interstate Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission met Monday outside Washington to discuss the implementation of the new rules, which are designed to reduce serious injuries and deaths among whales by 60 percent.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times